When Vocabulary Breaks Communication: A Community Workshop to Map Terms, Techniques, and Artifacts Across Disciplines

Abstract

Across Human Factors Engineering, UX, CX, HCD, HSI, and related disciplines, teams frequently use different words for similar concepts, or the same words for very different work. The result: hiring confusion, mismatched expectations, unclear deliverables, and difficulty explaining value to stakeholders. This interactive, design‑thinking workshop invites the HFES community to help untangle this “alphabet soup” by mapping the terms, techniques, and artifacts that shape our shared practice. Building on previous work, this year’s workshop adds improved structure, clearer prompts, and new ways to capture input across the entire conference. Attendees will work to generate terms, cluster concepts, compare interpretations, and label themes, which will result in a collective, community‑driven artifact that clarifies how our vocabulary overlaps and differs. Help build a better understanding of how we can use practical language to communicate scope, value, and expectations more effectively with the leaders, partners, and cross‑disciplinary teams we work with every day.